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Jonathan Manthorpe: China and the two Koreas perform an intricate dance

Beijing is clearly irritated with the antics of North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, but probably not enough for China to revise its national interests and bring the young monarch of Pyongyang to heel.

Beijing likes the current setup of a divided Korea with Kim’s Pyongyang regime providing a buffer between its northeastern border and the United States’ ally South Korea.

But with China experiencing a fast-growing economic relationship with South Korea, the equation in northeast Asia between Seoul, Beijing and Pyongyang is a dynamic one.

While some interests of the three governments coincide, others do not.

Each capital sees benefits from the developing relationships, but also dangers that they want to avoid.

An added ingredient to this three-cornered relationship is that as well Kim in Pyongyang, who inherited the leadership when his father died in December 2011, there are new leaders in Beijing and Seoul.

Xi Jinping was appointed head of the Chinese Communist Party in November and will become President of China in March, while Park Geun Hye has just been elected South Korea’s first woman President.

But even though Beijing has been unusually blunt in publicly expressing its disapproval of Kim’s testing of an intercontinental missile and preparations for a nuclear weapon test, China still sees its overriding national interest is to support North Korea and ensure the regime does not collapse.

The public criticism by Beijing of the Kim regime in the last few weeks sounds fierce, but has only been published in a few state-controlled media outlets aimed at English-speaking audiences.

Last Wednesday one of these outlets, The Global Times, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party’s main newspaper, the People’s Daily, carried an editorial with stern warnings for North Korea.

It has become evident, however, that not too much weight should be given to the views expressed in The Global Times, which seldom appear to be Chinese government policy.

Beijing seems to use the newspaper as a forum to allow ultra-nationalists to have their say in public and perhaps to spread some alarm in the U.S., Japan and among other of China’s competing countries.

Last week’s editorial urged Beijing to warn Pyongyang that if it goes ahead with a third nuclear weapons test following those in 2006 and 2009 “it must pay a heavy price.”

Aid from China, on which the near-moribund North Korean economy depends, should be reduced, said the newspaper.

“If Pyongyang gets tough with China, China should strike back hard, even at the cost of deteriorating bilateral relations,” it concluded.

Since the United Nations started imposing economic sanctions on Pyongyang in the 1990s to try to force it to give up its nuclear weapons program, China’s involvement in the North Korean economy has grown significantly.

Between 2007 and 2011 trade tripled to nearly $6 billion, which represents about 70 per cent of North Korea’s foreign trade.

But while North Korea relies on China for much of its food, most of its energy supplies, the bulk of its imported consumer goods and the income from exported minerals, it is unhappy about this dependence.

Underlying this wariness is a historic rivalry with China that South Korea shares.

Chinese historians maintain that the ancient kingdom of Koguryo, which all Koreans consider their national birthplace, was in fact Chinese.

In Pyongyang this national pride expresses itself as constant suspicion that Beijing is trying to install its own supporters at the top of the North Korean leadership.

A visible expression of this suspicion is the caution and reluctance Pyongyang has shown in recent years at adopting the Chinese model of capitalist authoritarianism, despite persistent efforts by Beijing to get the North Koreans to abandon its failed model of Marxist self-sufficiency.

South Korea has had diplomatic relations with Beijing only since 1992, in large part because of China’s intervention in the 1950-53 Korean War, which saved North Korea from being swallowed up by the South.

But in recent years trade between China and South Korea has grown dramatically. Two-way trade now tops $220 billion a year and South Korea’s business with China is bigger than with its other two top partners, Japan and the U.S., combined.

But the political links are not so friendly.

Seoul sees Beijing’s intervention in North Korea as distorting the relationships on the peninsular, bolstering Pyongyang’s bellicosity and hindering the prospects of eventual peaceful reunification.

There is also a growing sense among South Koreans that China is not only becoming a major commercial competitor, along with Japan, but is a growing threat to Seoul’s security interests as well.

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